A Emory News item on a helpful part of the microbiome focuses on how the same type of bacteria – lactobacilli – activates the same ancient signaling pathway in intestinal cells in both insects and mammals. It continues a line of research from Rheinallt Jones and Andrew Neish on how beneficial bacteria stimulate wound healing by activating ROS (reactive oxygen species).
Asma Nusrat, MD
A idea behind this research is: if we know what parts of the bacteria stimulate healing, perhaps doctors can deliver that material, or something very close, to patients directly to treat intestinal diseases such as Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis.
This idea has advanced experimentally, as demonstrated by two papers from Jones and Neish’s frequent collaborator, Asma Nusrat, who recently moved from Emory to the University of Michigan. This team had shown that a protein produced by human intestinal cells called annexin A1 activates ROS, acting through the same N-formyl peptide receptors that bacteria do.
Nusrat told me Friday her team began investigating annexins a decade ago at Emory, and it was fortuitous that Neish was working on beneficial bacteria right down the hall, since it is now apparent that annexin A1 and the bacteria are activating the same molecular signals. (Did you know there is an entire conference devoted to annexins? I didn’t until a few days ago.)
In a second Journal of Clinical Investigation paper published this February, Nusrat and her colleagues show that intestinal cells release vesicles containing annexin A1 following injury. The wound closure-promoting effects of these vesicles can be mimicked with nanoparticles containing annexin A1. The nanoparticles incorporate a form of collagen, which targets them to injured intestinal tissue.
The first author of both JCI papers is postdoc Giovanna Leoni, now in Munich, Germany. If you’re looking for more great images like the one of Drosophila intestine with bacteria, JCI editors designated this photo from Leoni’s 2015 paper as a “Scientific Show-Stopper”.
Nusrat has also begun collaborating with Georgia Tech’s Andres Garcia to deliver intestinal stem cells in hydrogels.
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